In Arcady

:

MY STUDY FIRE

MY STUDY FIRE, SECOND SERIES

UNDER THE TREES AND ELSEWHERE

SHORT STORIES IN LITERATURE

ESSAYS IN LITERARY INTERPRETATION

ESSAYS ON NATURE AND CULTURE

BOOKS AND CULTURE

ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE

THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT

NORSE STORIES

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

FOREST OF ARDEN

CHILD OP* NATURE

WORKS AND DAYS

PARABLES OF LIFE

MY STUDY FIRE. ILLUSTRATED

UNDER THE TREES. ILLUSTRATED

" The Goddess moving across the fields "

E) [£^ WflBJL'KHLOW:

RATTQOINIS BY CHARLIE §-L>m NY© M

COPYRIGHT I9O3

JAMES LANE ALLEN

IE PIPES OF THE FAUN 13

IE LYRE OF APOLLO

THE SICKLE OF DEMETER 85

POSTLUDE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY
W I L L- H • L O W

" The Goddess moving across the fields "... Frontispiece

The boy raised the pipes to his lips " . . Facing page 40

The Lyre of Apollo

Without, the stillness of the winter night " .

THE PIPES OF THE FAUN

IN

THE tenderest greeri ' w'as;
on the foliage, the whitest
clouds were in the sky,
and the showers were so sudden
that the birds were hardly dry
of one wetting before there came
another. These swift dashes of
rain seemed to fall out of the clear
blue, so mysteriously did the light
clouds dissolve into the depths of
heaven after every rush of pattering
drops in the woods. It was the
first spring day. The season had
come shyly up from the south, as
if half afraid to trust its sensitive
growths to the harsh airs and rough

[15]

caresses of the northern winds.
And sky and woods wore their
happiest smiles for the laggard
.season, and were bent on the
gayest revels, now that the guest
had come.

The last traces of the snow had
hardly vanished and there were
damp, cool places in the shadow
of rocks, where winter still waited
to be driven out by those search
ing fingers of light which leave
no hidden leaf or buried root un
touched. The woods that morn
ing were like an empty stage upon
which the curtain has been rolled
up. There were no moving figures,
but there were murmurs of sound,
mysterious noises, stirrings of things
out of sight, which made one aware
[16]

that the play was about to begin.
There were signs of impatience in
the great, silent theatre, as if the
first lines had been already delayed
too long. The sky and the earth
were getting more intimate every
hour ; secret forces, mysterious in
fluences, were moving in the depths
of air, and over the surface of the
world there played a subtle and
elusive softness, the first faint
breath of summer, the softest sigh
of returning life.

Last year's leaves lay dull red in
the hollow between the low hills,
and the black trunks of oaks made
the light, slender clusters of white
birches stand out with bright dis
tinctness on the slopes. The green
on the birches was so delicate that,

[2] [17]

ft

B#r

looking from a little distance, it
seemed more like a shading than
a colour ; but the clean blue of
the sky, blurred at times by slowly
passing clouds dark with rain, or
of such whiteness that they seemed
to be erasing every trace of the
momentary blackness, confirmed
the faint evidence that spring
had come.

/

18]

II

II

SO, at least, thought the Faun,
sitting at ease with his back
against an oak, his pipe in his
hand and his eye wandering curi
ously through the open spaces of
the wood. So entirely at home
was he that solitude or society
was alike to him, and the speech of
men or of animals equally plain.
There were hints of wildness about
him ; for he was brother to the folk
in fur and feather that lived in the
wrood, although the light in his eye
and the pipe in his hand showed
that he had travelled far from the
old instincts without having lost
them. There were hints of human
fellowship in his air of seeing the

[ 21]

world as well as being a part of
it ; although the absence of all
thought about himself, all ques
tioning of the sky and earth, made
one aware that if he held converse
with men he talked also with the
creatures that slept in the fields
and hid in the woods.

He was stretched at ease in a
world about which he had never
taken thought, being born into it
after the manner of the creatures
that live in free and joyous use of
the things of Nature without any
thought of Nature herself. In him,
however, the instinctive joy in life
had become articulate ; he spake
for the strange and wild instincts
of his kind, although he could not
speak of them. In his careless,

[22]

~-~-r-

unconscious, unthinking life all the
instincts and appetites and activi
ties of the living things that were
fed and housed by Nature played
freely, joyfully, without conscious
ness. He had, however, the gift
of speech ; and the a silent, secretive,
sensuous world became articulate
on his lips and he was the inter
preter of that world to men. Idle,
smiling, content alike with the sun
and the cloud, the Faun was so
much a part of the streaming life
about him that he did not see its
beauty or feel its mystery ; he was
without apprehension or curiosity ;
he had no tasks or duties ; there
was no law for him save obedience
to his own nature, which was sim
ple, sensuous, without thought or

care or obligation. When he put
his pipes to his lips and blew a few
clear notes there were no echoes of
human emotion or experience in
them ; they might have rained down
from the clouds with the song of
the skylark, which has the quality
of the solitude of the upper air in
it, or they might have been borne
gently in from a distance, like the
tones of the waterfall over the hill.
And yet there was something in
them which no bird or animal nor
any stirring of water or air could
have put there ; a sense of the
mounting life of the world, growing
and straining and rushing on to
fruition; the stir and murmur and
hum of bird and branch and bee;
the simple animal joy of sharing
[24]

the gift of life with all creatures,
without a hint of its uses, its mean
ing, its end, it was the song of life
when it knows that it is life and
all the instincts, passions, and de
sires awake and fulfil themselves.

[25]

III

Ill

^HESE notes, clear, soli
tary, penetrating, came
like an invitation to the
boy who had entered the wood with
out thought or care or desire, save
to feel the warmth of the sun and
to take what the day offered him.
He had never heard such sounds
before, but they seemed so much
a part of the place and the time
that he accepted them as if they
were human speech. The Faun
himself, visible now through the
light growth of the birch trees,
brought no surprise ; he, too, be
longed to the hour and the scene.
Instead of shyness a sense of fel
lowship grew on the boy as he came
[29]

nearer the pipe and the strange fig
ure which held it. The Faun did
not cease his fitful, vagrant music ;
he, too, seemed to apcept the boy
as of a piece with the season.

There was a deeper kinship be
tween the two than appeared at
the moment. Each had a past
strangely different from the other ;
the roots of the boy's nature reach
ing back through long generations
of thinking, questioning, responsible
creatures like himself; the roots of
the Faun's nature deep in the un
recorded experience of thousands
of generations of living things that
know all the ways of the wood and
field and stream and air, but had
never thought, questioned or had
a duty laid upon them. The Faun

[30]

had climbed to the point where all
this vast, confused, instinctive life
had become conscious that it lived ;
the boy had gone far on into a
world in which instinct had be
come intelligence, passion weakness
or power, appetite and desire mas
ter or servant. On that spring
morning, however, they stood on
the same plane of being; for the
Faun was happy in the sense of
life and the boy was just awaken
ing to the desire of the eye and
the joy of the muscles and the
bliss of the perfect body in the
world which plays upon it as
the wind on the harp. He did
not know what stirred within him,
but he felt as if he had come to
his own at last.

[31]

mm*

i/^X v::;

The notes of the pipe floated
through the wood and were sent
back in echoes from the hillside,
with bird-notes intermingled, and
the soft murmurs of tree tops gently
swayed, and the faint tones of water
falling from rock to rock hidden by
a press of ferns and softened by
mosses. The boy threw himself
at the Faun's feet and listened ;
and as he listened the whole world
seemed to come to life about him
and move together in sheer delight
in the cherishing of the sun and the
caressing of the clouds. The woods
were full of nesting birds ; through
the trees delicate patterings of feet
were heard, as if the creatures who
lived in the coverts and hidden
places were abroad without fear.

[32]

M

' t?

The boy seemed to hear a low,
far, continuous murmur as of grow
ing things in the ground shyly
reaching slender tendrils up for
the touch of the sun which was
to lift them out of the darkness
of birth into the bright mystery
of life, as of tiny leaves slowly
unfolding on innumerable branches.
The whole world seemed to be
moving in a vast beginning of
things ; creeping, shining, expand
ing, climbing in universal warmth
and light. Nothing seemed com
plete, everything was prophetic ;
the tide was beginning to ripple
in from the fathomless deeps of
being ; its ultimate sweep and vol
ume, foaming in the vast channels
through the mountains and tossing

[ 3 ] [ 33 ]

its crested waves to the summits,
was still far off in the summer to
which all things moved, but of
which there was neither thought
nor care on that first day of
spring.

It was the stir of life which the
boy heard, and the frank, free, un
questioning joy in it which made
riot in the mind of the Faun ; the
mystery and wonder of it were far
from the thought of these two
creatures of the season, the Faun
who had come up the long ascent
of animal life, and the boy who
stood for a moment with the Faun
at the place where joy in the sense
of life is at the full. The ways of
these two creatures met for one
hour that morning in early April,

[34]

they were comrades in a world
given over to lusty strength and
mounting gladness in tree and
flower and living creature.

IV

IV

the merry piping of the
Faun the boy laughed
gleefully ; here was the
wild playmate who could take him
deeper into the woods than he had
ever ventured and show him the
shy creatures wKo were always
eluding his eager search. And
the Faun, who was nearer his
brothers of the wood than his
brothers of the thatched roof and
the vine trained against the wall,
saw in the boy a fellow of his own
mind ; to whom the wind was a
challenge to kindred fleetness and
the notes of the birds floating
down the mountain side invitations
to adventure and action.
[ 39 ]

i^m^

The boy might have been twelve
or thirteen ; the Faun seemed to
be of no age ; he had never thought
and time had left no trace on his
brow or in his eye ; he might have
been born with Nature, or he might
have come with the spring. To-day
the boy was his fellow ; next spring
he would be so far away from him
that the sounds of the pipes might
never reach him again. Of this
gulf to widen between them the
Faun knew nothing ; it was the
kinship of boy with boy that
prompted him to hold out the
pipes to the sensitive hand which
showed the vast divergence of his
tory between the two. The boy
raised the pipes to his lips and
blew loudly through the rude joint-

[40]

The boy raised the pipes to his lips "

v : >': *J

ure of reeds, and then hung on
the far- travelling sounds which he
had set loose. There was a strange
compelling power in them as they
seemed to penetrate further and
further into the wood, and seizing
the hand of the Faun the two ran
together up the wooded hill and
over its crest into a world of which
the boy had only dreamed before.

He had seen the world a thou
sand times before, but now it flowed
in upon him through all the chan
nels of his senses ; a rushing, sing
ing, tumultuous tide swept him
along, and with the jubilant stream
the joy of life flooded his mind and
heart. A wild exultation seized
him, swept him out of himself,
and carried him on with the power

[41]

;.a.^ii

and sweep of a resistless torrent.
He ran, shouted, laughed as if some
hidden and inarticulate force within
him had suddenly broken bounds.
He was fellow with the bird that
sang on the bough and comrade
with the shy creatures who had
never suffered his approach before.
If he had known what was hap
pening within him he would have
understood the ancient frenzy of
the Bacchic worshippers ; the sur
render to the spell of the life of the
world, rising out of deep springs
in the heart of things, calling with
the potency of ancient witcheries to
his instincts, taking possession of
his quickening senses, and mount
ing with intoxicating glow to his
imagination.

,!,

'.

V

I

pipe of the Faun drew
his feet far into the secret
places of the woods, and
with every step he seemed to be
breaking some imprisonment, find
ing some new liberty. The Faun
could have told him much of that
ancient world which was old before
man began to look, to wonder, to
comprehend ; but the wild music
of those few notes, so inarticulate
but so full of the unspoken life of
hidden and fugitive things, spoke
to his senses as no words of human
speech could have spoken. They
were full of echoes of a dateless
past, of which no memory remained
save that which was deposited in

[45]

instinct and habit ; the earliest and
oldest form of memory. He was
recovering the lost possession of his
race ; the primitive experiences that
lay behind its childhood and made
a deep, rich, warm soil for its
ancient divinations and for those
dreams of an older world which
haunt it and are always luring its
poets to the secret homes of that
beauty which embosoms the youth
of men, and fills them with infinite
longing and regret when spring
comes flooding up the shores of
being after the long silence and
desolation.

In that far-off world the Faun
still lived, and when he blew on
the reeds its echoes set the very
heart of the boy vibrating with a

[461

joy whose sources were far beyond
his ken. Through the soft splen
dour of the spring day, so tender
with the fertility of immemorial
years, so overflowing with the glad
ness of the births that were to be,
the boy ran, without thought or
care ; every sense flooded with the
young beauty and joy of the sea
son ; his feet caught in the rhythm
of unfolding life, his imagination
aflame with a thousand elusive in
tonations of pleasure, a thousand
salutations from trees and birds
and restless creatures keeping time
and tune with the rhythm of the
creative hour in wood and field
and sky.

In later days, when the spell had
dissolved, what he saw on that day
[47]

lay like a golden mist behind him,
and what he heard lingered in
faint, inarticulate echoes that set
his pulses beating ; but he recalled
no definite glimpses and remem
bered no articulate words ; he only
knew that he had entered into the
joy of life, and had been given the
freedom of the world. Never again
did he hear a song in the woods
without pausing in hushed silence
because he stood on the verge of
an older world ; never again did
he catch a sudden glimpse of the
trunks of trees black against a dull
red background of oak leaves or a
wintry sky without a throbbing of
the heart, which made him aware
that he was in the presence of
the oldest mysteries.

[48]

-v

When night fell and a low mur
mur of innumerable creatures, shel
tering in familiar places, filled the
woods, the boy looked in vain for
the Faun ; but far off he heard the
wild notes, softened by the hush
of the hour, like the sounds of
dreams dreamed when the world
was young.

[49]

THE LYRE OF APOLLO

IT was mid-June and the world
was in flower. The delicate
promise of April, when the
pipes of the Faun echoed in the
depths of woods faintly touched
with the tenderest green, was ful
filled in a mass and ripeness of
foliage which had parted with none
of its freshness, but had become
like a sea of moving and whisper
ing greenness. The delicious heat
of the early summer evoked a
vagrant and elusive fragrance from
the young grasses starred with
flowers. The morning songs, which
made the break of day throb with
an ecstasy of melody, were caught
up again and again through the

[53]

long, tranquil hours by careless
singers, happy in some hidden
place in the meadows or sheltered
within the edges of the wood ; and
with these sudden bursts of hidden
music, there came the cool breath
of the dawn into the sultry noon.
The world was folded in a dream of
heat ; not arid, blasting, palpitating ;
but caressing, vitalising, liberating.
The earth, loved of the sun, was
no longer coy and half afraid ; she
had given herself wholly, and in the
glad surrender the beauty that lay
hidden in her heart had clothed her
like a garment. In the fulfilment
of her life a sudden bliss had dis
solved her passionless coldness into
the life-giving warmth of universal
fertility.

[54]

The Lyre of Apollo

So deep was the current of life
which flowed through the world
and so full and sweeping the tide,
that the youth, whom it seemed to
overtake in the heart of the pines,
was half intoxicated by the delicious
draughts held to his lips, and was in
an ecstasy of wonder and mystery
and joy. He had known the world
well since that early spring morn
ing years before when he had come
upon the Faun, and the two had
gone together, eager feet keeping
time to the vagrant music of the
pipes, to the secret places where
the wild things live and are not
afraid. From that hour in his boy
hood he had known bird and beast
so well that he came and went
among them even as one of them,

[55]

'.'•',

f

fjf

%

,-

and his voice brought no terror
and his shadow no sudden fear as
he wandered, glad and friendly,
through the heart of the forest.
For half a decade he had had the
freedom of the field and the wood,
and had lived like a child of nature
in the joy and strength of the life
that is one with the health and
beauty of the hills and stars.

Again and again he had seemed
to hear, borne on the air of some
still afternoon, the faint music of
the pipes of the Faun, but he had
never again met that ancient dweller
in the woods face to face. Nor had
he needed to ; for the fresh delight,
the instinctive joy in the life of
things, the free play of muscle, the
complete surrender to the sight or
[56]

bgG?S

1'rMti

yg$\

:- -,'n

sound or pleasure of the moment,
had been his in full measure ; and
he had lived the life of the senses
in glad unconsciousness. And the
years had gone by and left no
mark on him, save the hardening
of muscle, the filling out of limb,
the waxing strength, the growing
exhilaration of youth and freedom
and infinite capacity for action and
pleasure swiftly coming to clear
consciousness.

•:~^;' & '*&»•

•

[57

/// ^?»-

m

II

II

i

THROUGH the long years
of boyhood Nature lay
mirrored in his senses

without blur or mist, and the images
of her manifold wonder and beauty
had sunk into the depths of his
being. He had lived in the moving
world that lay about him, stirred
into incessant action by its constant
appeal to his energy, caught up and
carried forward for days together in
a joyful rush of play ; led hither
and thither in endless quest of little
mysteries of sight and sound that
teased and baffled him ; absorbed
into complete self-forgetfulness by
the vast continent where his lot
was cast, which called him with a
[61]

thousand voices to exploration and
discovery.

Of late, however, there had come
a touch of pain in his careless joy ;
a sense of mystery which disturbed
and perplexed him ; a consciousness
of something strange and alien to
the wild, free life he had been liv
ing. He no longer felt at home
in the woods, and it seemed to
him as if the old intimacy with
the creatures that lived there had
been chilled. He was no longer
free-minded and free-hearted. He
had lived until this hour in the
world without him ; now the world
within was rising into view ; he was
coming to the knowledge of him
self. And that knowledge was
fraught with pain, as is all knowl-
[62]

- *

edge that penetrates to a man's soul
and becomes part of him. As a
child he had known only one world ;
now another world was rising into
view, vexed with mists, obscured by
shadows ; a strange, mysterious, un
discovered country, full of enchant
ments, but elusive and baffling.

The world he knew seemed to
contradict and fall apart from the
world which was slowly disclosing
itself to him, like a planet wheeling
out of storm and mist into an
ordered sphere. Every morning
brought him the joy of discovery
and the pain of "moving about in
worlds not realised." The old order
of his life had suddenly vanished ;
the sense of familiarity, of intimate
living, of home-keeping and home-
[68]

loving habit, had passed with it,
and the youth awoke to find him
self in a new world, without bound
or horizon, through which no paths
ran to wonted places of rest and
use.

[64

Ill

III

IN such a mood, exhilarated and
depressed, full of mounting
life, but with the touch of
pain on his spirit, the youth had
found the murmur of the pines
soothing and restful ; like a cool
hand laid on a hot forehead. Again
and again, in these confused and
perplexing months, he had fled to
their silence and shade as to a re
treat in the heart of old and dear
things.

As he came across the fields on
this radiant morning all the springs
of joy were once more rising in
him ; the young summer touched
him through every sense, and his
soul rushed out to meet her in a
[67]

# J.I'BEfCQZEQai

passion of devotion and self-sur
render. The pain was stilled, the
sense of loneliness had vanished ;
and in their place had come a sud
den consciousness of new intimacies
forming themselves with incredible
swiftness, a deep sense of a unity
between his spirit and the heart of
things of which the old familiarity
had been but a faint prophecy.
Over the undiscovered country of
his own soul the mists were melt
ing, the clouds rolling up into
the blue and dissolving in infinite
depths of tenderest sky, mountain
ranges were defining their outlines
against the sky, and the " light that
never was on sea or land " was
swiftly unveiling' a harmony and
unity of world with world which
[68]

8BsS^'

was itself a new and higher beauty
than had dawned before on the
vision of youth.

The stillness of the summer lay
in the heart of the wood, and only
the gentle swaying and whispering
of the pines, caressed by the light
est of moving airs, made one aware
that something stirred in the vast
and shining silence of the sky. It
seemed to the youth, when he had
entered the inner sanctuary of the
wood, as if the spirit of things were
touching invisible chords so softly
that they vibrated almost without
sound. He recalled the pipes of
the Faun, so clear, piercing, dis
tinct, tuned to the simplest pleas
ures of the senses, with the feeling
that he had heard them echoing
[69]

\^

?&S£t^5

S'

through the wood in some other
life ; so remote, detached and alien
were they to the richer mood, the
deeper emotion, the mounting pas
sion, of the time and place. He
heard them as one hears a clear, far
cry which lies in the ear, but calls
to nothing in one's spirit and sets
no echoes flying in one's soul.

[70]

IV

A

IV

ND while he hung upon the
silence, with the faint,
shrill notes of the pipes
making old music in his memory,
suddenly, as from some deeper re
treat, some more ancient sanctuary,
there rose upon the hushed air a
melody that laid a finger on his lips
and a hand on his heart and flooded
the innermost recesses of his being.
Stricken with sudden silence, mute
under the spell of a music which
left no thought unspoken and no
experience unexpressed, he hung on
the thrilling notes as if all the won
der and beauty and mystery of the
world and the soul had found speech
at last, and out of the innermost
[73]

heart of things life flowed in a tu
multuous, free, and joyous rush of
sound.

The pipes of the Faun had spoken
to him of the joy of living, of the
delight of motion, of the pleasure
of the eye and ear, of the manifold
murmur and happiness of living
creatures when the sun makes the
fields glad and the woods are full
of nesting birds. It was a music
which lay in the ear, clear and dis
tinct, without modulation or mys
tery or any touch of that rich and
baffling complexity of motive which
comes with the rise into sound of
those hidden and secret forces which
feed the roots of life and nourish all
beauty at the sources of being ; the
music of clear skies, of grain mov-
[74]

77

f-

ing with the wind in long billows
across the fields, of softly swaying
forests, of rivers flowing in quiet
fulness, of birds on the wing and
creatures of many kinds living their
lives in glad unison ; and of a boy's
happiness in the sight and sound of
all these things.

But the music upon which the
youth hung, mute and motionless
in the shadow of the pines, did not
rest in the ear, nor weave its melody
out of familiar airs heard a thousand
times in idle or busy hours ; it flowed
resistless and compelling into the
secret places of the soul, and all the
deep and far harmonies of which
he dreamed when the mystery of
the parts blending into one infinite
whole subdued him were caught up
[75]

in it and moved together in a flood
of fathomless sweetness. In this
rich harmony of the full, pulsating
life of things the earlier song of the
play of life over the surface of the
world wras but a slender rivulet lost
in a wide and all-embracing tide.
Those far pipings of the Faun made
the merry, light-hearted music of
the world as it lay mirrored in the
senses ; these later and penetrating
tones made the music of the world
as it sunk deep into the imagination
and touched the soul of the youth.
The prelusive notes of discovery
were caught up and mingled with
the sublime music of revelation ;
the world which flashed in the sun
was the blossom and fruit of the
fathomless life hidden in the heart
[76]

of things, and this mysterious and
flooding life was at one with the life
that had come to knowledge and
consciousness in his spirit.

The gods make the music to
which youth moves with eager feet,
and if the youth had thrown off the
spell that held him mute and mo
tionless in the heart of the pines he
would have seen a face which was
long the light of a world which has
sunk below the horizon, but from
which the artists and poets still
draw their inspiration, and to which
those who make the images of beauty
have always gone to test the perfec
tion of the work of their hands ; a
face of noble and ineffable beauty ;
the features expressive of perfect
symmetry and of the finest individ-
[77]

uality; the eyes unshadowed by
pain, luminous, tender, glowing ; the
great shape so divinely fashioned
that strength was lost in beauty
and beauty became the highest
form of strength.

78]

V

V

A^ONG way the god had
come and manifold had
been his wanderings ; but
wherever he went the music of high
heaven went with him. When he
watched the herds in shepherd's
guise, the sound of the strings
touched by his hand had not only
led the flocks, docile and happy, but
so filled them with life that they had
grown as flocks1 had never grown be
fore. Healer and protector, bringer
of light and health, the splendour of
his face was the poetry of the world,
the glance of his eye its prophecy,
the trembling of the strings at his
touch its music. He was the mas
ter of all living things and of the

[6] [81]

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flash and charm of the soul of
Nature caught for a moment in
the shimmer of leaves and the
shining of water.

But it was the diviner beauty,
moving out of sight to ultimate
ends, which gave his face its majesty
of repose and depth of loveliness.
For him there were no shadows ; in
his ear no discords sounded ; for in
him the brightness of the sky was
prisoned and his hand made the
music of the spheres. He saw the
roots of things ; he heard the grasses
growing in the darkness of the earth ;
he marked the rising and falling of
the tide of life in all the invisible
channels in which it ebbs and flows ;
in his mind all things were revealed
in their divine order, and begin-

[82]

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m

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Sk

1

Y'TI

I

ning and end were shown in radiant
progression.

And because all things were re
vealed to him and the order of crea
tion moved about him in unbroken
unity he was the interpreter of this
hidden harmony to men, the inspirer
of all song, the maker of all visions,
the master of the mystery of the
world. In him fact and power and
thought were blended and harmo
nised in the creative imagination,
and from him flowed the stream of
creative energy.

And while the youth hung on
the throbbing of the unseen lyre the
hidden order of the world was re
vealed to him, and he too heard the
vast, inarticulate murmur of life as
cending from form to form in the
[Mj

'v.

depths where the forces that mould
the mountain summits and colour
the light that shines on them, that
fashion the flower with delicate skill
and drive forth the blast that blights
it, forever build and destroy that
they may rebuild on broader foun
dations and on a nobler plan.

And the meaning of the world
grew clear; for the youth under
stood his own spirit, and in that
knowledge the confusions vanished
while the mystery deepened ; and
the splendour fell on his heart so
that it was a pain, and the mel
ody of it seemed too great for his
spirit.

84]

THE SICKLE OF DEMETER

IN the great, open world of far-
spreading fields there was a
sense of repose. The tide
which had fertilised all things that
grow and bloom and bear fruit was
beginning to ebb, though there was
no sign of vanishing beauty on the
face of the landscape. In the riot
of midsummer, when the lust of
life sometimes rose to a kind of
Bacchic fury of delight, there had
been no richer bloom of beauty on
the surface of Nature than that
which lay, half seen and half re
membered, on the fields in the ripe
autumn afternoon. The rich love
liness that had once spread itself
like a soft veil over all things had
[87]

slowly sunk to their roots, and,
as it receded, diffused a deeper
splendour, a more concentrated
and enchanting beauty, over the
tranquil fields.

With the ripening of the season
had come a stillness in which the
voices of reapers and gleaners were
heard at a great distance ; as if
Nature had ceased to work and
sat listening to the harvest songs
of her children, glad in heart be
cause of her fertility. To the
tumult of creative forces vitalising
the earth afresh in the early sum
mer had succeeded the deep repose
of completed work ; the noise and
clamour of action had died in the
silence of that meditative mood
which follows fast upon the fin-

[88]

ished task and reveals its quality
and significance.

The final transfiguration which,
like a great torch held aloft by a
retreating goddess, was to flash
from the heart of things a sudden,
brief, and ineffable splendour, was
still unlighted, and the earth rested
in quiet content, ripe with all fruit-
fulness, laden with the wealth of
vine and grain and bending bough.
Through long, tranquil days the
rhythm of the scythe had beat on
the ear, and brought back an
ancient music heard in forgotten
years when the race was young
and played with the gods who still
haunted the world they had made.
The heavy-laden wain had moved
slowly across the fields, like some
[89]

.„ %

m

rude barge overweighted with an
opulent cargo, and awkwardly drift
ing through the long afternoons to
its anchorage beside the great,
empty barns, A steady heat, not
blinding and consuming, but per
vasive and penetrating, evoked the
sweetness of ripened grain, and
mellow fruits seemed to distil and
express their sweetness in the air.
The fragrance of fruitage, so much
richer than that of the budding
time, filled the world and made
the heart glad with the sense of
fulfilment and possession.

[90]

II

I

II

the man who came
slowly across the fields
the whole world smelled

of the ripened summer ; of all the
rich juices which had mounted out
of the soul in a million million
spears and stalks and blades and
stems ; of all the potencies of form
and colour and odour, hidden in
the darkness, that had escaped to
take shape in innumerable grasses,
flowers, and shrubs with a skill
surpassing the thought of man, and
had breathed into them a sweetness
deep as the fathomless purity of
Nature ; of the mysterious fountain
of life at the heart of things, which
so many men have sought but
[93]

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•

which no man has found, which
had silently overflowed and vitalised
all things, and was now receding as
silently and mysteriously as it had
risen.

Life had once more expressed it
self and was again silent ; the old
miracle had been performed anew
under the eyes of all men, and was
as incomprehensible to these latest
as it had been to the earliest work
ers in the fields ; the mystery had
been revealed afresh and was still
impenetrable ; the earth had fed her
children and filled their storehouses
and granaries against the time of
need ; but no man had seen the lift
of her hand or caught the sound of
her foot in all those months when
the world could hardly contain the
[94

, \

*V — T

f

i'W

manifold and tremendous energies
she kept at work.

Time, the ripener, had made
friends with the man who medi
tated in the well-gleaned fields and
had enriched him year by year.
Far back in boyhood he had heard
the pipes of the Faun and followed
them, glad and free, into the depths
of the wood and lived at ease with
the creatures that hide there ; the
birds paid no more attention to him
than to other familiar and friendly
things ; he had early won the free
dom of the fields and been as one
of the wild things that have no other
roof but the sky, and are fed by the
providence of Nature.

And then, in his golden youth,
when the imagination kindles and
[95

,*o i

the commonest things are touched
with poetry, he had listened like
one enchanted to the full, rich tones
of Apollo's lyre, vibrating to the
touch of the secret forces and re
vealing the mystery and splendour
and sublime order of things in such
a swell and sweep of melody as
set all the worlds singing together.
And in that divine music the world
that had lain outspread in his senses
in all its varied beauty sank into his
imagination and broadened immeas
urably into a universe whose love
liness was the bloom of the streaming
life at its heart, whose aspects and
movements and forces were signs and
words of his own inner life, whose
vastness and order and variety were
a sublime symbol of an intelligence
[96]

everywhere at work but nowhere
revealed, which was at one with
his own spirit.

These two great revelations had
made his life one long, orderly, quiet
unfolding; as the physical charac
teristics of one age had passed away
its spiritual quality had been wrought
into him, and he had gone on from
one period to another with stead
ily increasing wealth of impression,
knowledge, and power. Instead of
weakening, the years had enriched
him ; at the ripe moment in each
succeeding period he had trans
muted the physical into spiritual
strength, and his past lived in his
present, unwasted and unforgotten.
Old now in years, the joy and fresh
ness of childhood, the ardour and

m [ 97 ]

enthusiasm of youth, the organised
and tempered strength of maturity,
were his in higher measure and finer
quality than he had possessed them
before. For him the Faun still
piped far afield when the tenderest
green was on the trees ; for him the
far-sounding chords of Apollo's lyre
were still struck when the beauty
of the summer flooded the world ;
and now, at the summit of the long
ascent of the years, he walked with
Nature with quick eye, kindling im
agination, and a repose in his heart
as deep as that which folded the
world in a vast peace.

[98]

III

Ill

A~TD for him, as for all who
live with Nature, the hour
of revelation was not
ended ; upon the later as upon the
earlier years there was to come
the breath of the divine. As he
walked the stillness seemed to
deepen ; the voices of reapers and
gleaners died into silence ; the great
barges came to anchorage beside the
barns. A hush fell upon the world
toward sunset, so akin to that which
fills the dim arches and deep aisles
of cathedrals that the old man
paused, looked thoughtfully over
the landscape, and seated himself
beside a familiar tree. The air
was warm, and moved so gently

[101]

that it seemed like the caress of un
seen hand ; the western sky turned
into gold and the world became a
temple the splendour of which had
been foreshowed, but never realised
before. All things were silent ; for
it was the vesper hour of the sum
mer and Nature was both shrine
and worshipper.

Reverent and worshipful the man
sat with uncovered head, and eyes
which seemed to see the vision of
the years silently passing, laden
with gifts. And while he waited
and remembered and worshipped,
across the level stretches of the
fields, far toward the horizon, a
golden mist seemed to move toward
him, borne lightly forward by an
unseen* current of air. Slowly it

[102]

l/i'l

drew nearer, and as it came the
silence deepened and a sudden awe
ran through the world. The mist
grew more dense and real, and
within it outlines defined and shapes
formed themselves, and the heart
of the man told him that again
the gods were abroad. Faint and
far he seemed to hear the clear,
shrill notes of the Faun, and nearer
and deeper and clearer the music
of the lyre breathed through the
silence the great song of the creative
moment ; and then, preluded by the
simple melody of childhood and the
richer music of youth, the Goddess
stood in the fields and he saw her
move her divinely moulded arms as
if in benediction. The glory of the
west shone behind her like burnished

[103]

gold and wrapped her in a splen
dour which at once revealed and hid
her ; her yellow hair was like a nim
bus round her benignant face, and
she moved as one who possessed the
world and enriched it without self-
impoverishment. Custodian of the
fields, guardian of the sower and the
reaper, the mellow air was incense
to her and the bursting graneries
and barns were her treasure-houses.
Behind her lay the long road of
her wanderings, and as it had blos
somed before her feet, so now, in
the hour of her enthronement, it
gathered unto itself, like a robe of
cloth of gold, all the rich beauty
it had won while the sun had ca
ressed and cherished it. Before the
Goddess, like a splendid offering,

[104]

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A I

the richness of the world was
spread ; and in her its fruitful proc
esses were incarnated and personi
fied. The life that recorded its
earliest coming in the most deli
cate and elusive forms of beauty,
and, later, rose into a kind of
Bacchic fury of creative energy
until the whole world throbbed
and pulsed with the divine intox
ication of mounting and climbing
and blossoming vitality, was hushed
and harmonised in a sublime repose ;
its passion completely expressed, its
secret and hidden forces sent to their
farthest ends, its mysterious proc
esses accomplished, its work done
with divine joy and perfection.

The ancient symbolism had been
manifest again in the vision of all

[105]

TO
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who could understand : the frozen
earth ; the slow-moving sun ; the
hard, black seed sown in darkness ;
the searching of the light and heat,
lovingly caressing the fields ; the
death of the seed, the birth of the
flower and grain ; the slender blade
creeping up out of the grave of the
husk into the world of life ; the
growing stalk caught in the uni
versal stirring of things ; the time
of flowering, redolent of fragrance
and jubilant with the songs of birds ;
the ripening in the long, quiet sum
mer days, when all things were
glad of life and silently grew in
its fulness ; and now, at the end,
the fruit-bearing and harvesting,
the consummation of it all and the
crowning of the year.

IV

IV

THE Goddess, whose yel
low hair was like a nim
bus of sunshine about her,
brought the fragrance of the early
summer in her train, and crocus and
hyacinth, narcissus and violet, daffo
dil, arbutus, and hepatica were in
the air in delicate suggestion ; in
her coming the rose, which lies on
the heart of nature, the ravishing
symbol of her passion, bloomed
again in all its deep-dyed loveli
ness. With her, too, moved the
rich, ardent, passionate, stirring and
climbing and unfolding of midsum
mer, when the earth bares her heart
to the sun and gives herself in a
great surrender. In the Goddess,
[ 109 ]

f£%&4?£*-

moving across the fields with a step
so light and buoyant that she seemed
a vision floating in air, the full, ripe
putting forth of the life of the world,
radiant with visible beauty to the
eye and fathomlessly significant of
the invisible order of things to the
imagination, was personified.

And now, in the supreme hour
when all the forces of Nature ful
filled themselves in fruitage, the
silent watcher of the ancient mys
tery saw in the coming and pres
ence of the Goddess the symbol of
his own life. To him, as to the
open fields, there had been the time
of the sowing and of the reaping ;
to him, as to the landscape, there
had been the early glow of life, the
delicate beauty, the fresh and sweet

[110]

beginnings of growth ; the opening
of the spirit through the senses, like
a flower unfolding petal after petal
to the glance of the sun and the
touch of the air. To him, also, had
come the effulgence of the young
summer when the imagination, kin
dling a sudden fire and light within,
had flooded the senses and streamed
out over the world and touched all
things with a glory not their own,
and the life of the youth had been
a rushing tide of joy and strength
and exultant energy ; deep, tumul
tuous and passionate with the glad
ness and the pain of a meaning at
the heart too great for any kind of
speech. And now had come the
broad content, the deep serenity,
the fathomless repose of powers put
[in]

forth, energy expressed, functions
fulfilled, growth accomplished In
the silence which enfolded the God
dess and brought the sense of in
finite peace with it the watcher was
aware of the harmony between his
life and the life of Nature. The
two had moved so long in unison
that they had become as one, set to
the same music, borne onward to
the same ends ; each fulfilling itself
in obedience to that law of order,
of beauty, of fruitfulness, under
which the world has bloomed and
borne its fruit through uncounted
centuries.

And while he watched and medi
tated, and the meaning of it all
grew clear and sank into his soul,
the golden west softly veiled itself

[112]

in the mists that gather at the gates
of night, and the vision faded and
the man was alone with the earliest
stars.

POSTLUDE

I

A~iE had come graciously
to the man who sat be
fore the wide hearth.
There had been no sudden change,
no withering of the affections, no
abrupt decline of power ; the tide
had gone out gently and softly in
the hush at the end of the day and
left a deep peace behind it. There
had been a long ripening, and then
a half-realised translation of the
physical into spiritual energies ;
knowledge had deepened into wis
dom, and in the cool of the even
ing there had come that tranquil
meditation which distils sweetness
out of arduous activities and
[117]

passionate experiences ; the pause
which intervenes between succes
sive stages of unfolding ; the silence
in which one parts from a life end
ing and greets a life beginning. As
the grain 'ripens for the gleaning
and the fruit for the plucking, so
the spirit of a man ripens in the
quietness of age.

In this deep serenity the man sat
by the fire which had become a bed
of glowing embers and warmed his
soul as well as his body. And there
passed before him the vision of the
life within and the life without
mounting together, season after sea
son, to perfect fruition. He saw
the tender twig, green and sensi
tive, growing shyly in the shadow
of great trees. He saw the full,

[118]

k

round trunk, with heavy branches
dense with foliage, expanding
quietly through immemorial years,
and assimilating with itself the
forces of soil and air and sky
until it held the ripe juices of
centuries of summers. He saw the
tree in its full maturity, standing
in the strength of complete growth
and ripeness. He heard its crash
when the axe of the woodman had
done its work ; he had watched the
earliest flame creeping between the
logs, and bursting at length into
a blaze in which all the forgotten
summers that had given it of their
vitality conspired together to recall
the splendour of golden hours far
down the horizon of the past. And
now, its growth completely accom-
[1191

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plished, its life completely lived, |||
the tree had become a bed of

embers, soon to become a handful

•^>mm

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II

II

I

parable, old as the
earth and new as the slen
derest sapling in the woods,
the old man read again with a deep
and tranquil joy. There was a true
kinship between him and the life
going out in light and warmth at
his feet, as there was between him
and all things that live within the
wide empire of Nature. As he sat
there*, with whitened locks but with
the heart of youth, tranquil and ex
pectant, the light shone on the path
by which he had come and it lay be
fore him like a road across a rolling
country upon which one looks down
from some friendly hill. Far off
against the horizon he saw the boy,

[123]

breaking joyfully into the vast play
ground of childhood, where the
mightiest forces sport with children
and the most significant and impres
sive forms become the symbols of
their young fancies ; and he caught
once more the piercing tones of the
pipes of the Faun.

And travelling along the road, he
overtook the youth, eager, exultant,
open-eyed, running with swift feet,
his soul kindling into a great flame
and the familiar landscape changing
into fairyland at the touch of the
master magician ; and again, as of
old, there came the flooding mel
ody, streaming up from the heart
of things, which swept from the
lyre of the god and ran to the
ends of the world.

[124]

.-

" Without, the stillness of the winter night

» ; '

Once more the road lengthened
and passed through fields of ripened
grain ; and in the mellow silence
there rose a mist against the hori
zon, slowly moving nearer, and out
of illusive mystery of light and
shadow emerged the Goddess of
the yellow hair, for whom the
earth yields up her store of vital
ity, and in whom all things that
fulfil themselves in perfect growth
are personified.

Without, the stillness of the win
ter night filled the wide heavens set
with a thousand stars. The earth
was hidden out of sight by a great
fall of snow, which had wrought
magical changes in the familiar
landscape. Long ago the last har
vest-field had been gleaned, and

[125]

the latest load safely housed in the
great barns. The meadows lay cold
and sterile in the fierce winds that
swept them ; and the shining heav
ens seemed to be infinitely distant
from the earth over which they had
brooded in the long summer days.

The old man saw the stainless
whiteness on the stretches of meadow
and the icy glitter of the wintry
stars, but there was no shadow on
his face. The fields, like the tree,
had lived their life to the end and
borne their fruit. The glow was
fading among the embers, and he
overlaid them with ashes ; to-mor
row another hand would uncover
them, and their last lingering vital
ity would light another fire. Deep
under the snow he heard the stir-

[126]

rings of the life that was making
ready for another outpouring of
blossom and fruit.

To-night a sinking fire, an ice
bound world, a body smitted with
age ; to-morrow the glow of an
other flame, the beauty of another
summer, the reach and splendour
of a larger life !

•:

[127]

:'.-

OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY